We have investigated the use of a novel technique, in situ end-labelling, as a means of the specific identification of apoptotic cells in formalin-fixed, paraffin-processed tissue sections. The technique relies on the presence of DNA strand breaks in apoptotic cells, caused by activation of endogenous nuclease activity during the process of cell death. These strands are labelled with a non-isotopic reporter molecule in the presence of a DNA polymerase, and labelled DNA is identified immunohistochemically. We show that in situ end-labelling stains cells with the morphological characteristics of apoptosis, and greatly simplifies their identification. Furthermore, in two model systems, the number of labelled cells parallels the number of cells undergoing apoptosis as measured by alternative techniques. The ability of the Klenow fragment of DNA polymerase to label apoptotic nuclei suggests that the characteristic DNA fragmentation seen during this process involves the formation of DNA breaks with a 5' overhang. In situ end-labelling will be valuable for the identification and quantitation of apoptosis in a range of normal tissues and in a variety of pathological states. However, the technique is not specific for programmed cell death, and results must be interpreted with caution and correlated with morphological criteria of apoptosis.

The thymus is a critically important organ during development, but atrophies progressively during the ageing process after puberty and is often considered to be unimportant in adult life. We have found that the thymus, which is grossly atrophied in 12- to 15-month-old male rats, is markedly restored in size 30 days after orchidectomy. The organ then appears normal histologically, having a well-defined cortex and medulla, is vascularized and filled with thymocytes. The regeneration of the thymus after orchidectomy was inhibited in a dose-related fashion by testosterone implants which produced serum concentrations of testosterone within the physiological range. The thymus was also increased in size after orchidectomy of 10-week-old rats, and testosterone inhibited the enlargement of the thymus. These results have important implications for the possible enhancement of the immune system with associated improvement of health during ageing and disease. They also point to an important physiological link between the endocrine and immune systems.

Wireless sensor networks enable dense sensing of the environment, offering unprecedented opportunities for observing the physical world. Centralized data collection and analysis adversely impact sensor node lifetime. Previous sensor network research has, therefore, focused on in network aggregation and query processing, but has done so for applications where the features of interest are known a priori. When features are not known a priori, as is the case with many scientific applications in dense sensor arrays, efficient support for multi-resolution storage and iterative, drill-down queries is essential. Our system demonstrates the use of in-network wavelet-based summarization and progressive aging of summaries in support of longterm querying in storage and communication-constrained networks. We evaluate the performance of our linux implementation and show that it achieves: (a) low communication overhead for multi-resolution summarization, (b) highly efficient drill-down search over such summaries, and (c) efficient use of network storage capacity through load-balancing and progressive aging of summaries.

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There was no visible thymus in ageing rats of 18 months, and 7 days after orchidectomy there was still no evidence of a thymus. By 30 days after the operation, however, there was a well-defined and well developed bilobular thymus overlying the heart, although it was smaller than those observed in 10-week-old rats. Histologically, the tissue appeared normal, was well vascularized, filled with lymphocytes and several mitotic figures were also seen. When compared with sham-operated animals, blood from these animals had a significantly higher lymphocyte count. These results have important implications for the possible enhancement of the immune system with associated improvement of health during ageing.